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Recent Stories
March 24, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
March
22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood for Oil:
the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint Them
Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic Protest
for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Stephen Banko
I Was a Soldier
Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did We Become
an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
Myths and
Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come On Democrats,
Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch from
Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The Erosion
of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush:
A Draft Resolution
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March
25, 2003
For Bush Democracy
Fails When It Works
Earth vs. Bush
By DAVID VEST
So
who will prevail? The overwhelming majority of the people now alive
on earth, or George W. Bush?
Ken Lay's creature,
the man who was reading "Thomas the Tank Engine" when the
first plane hit the World Trade Towers, stands with his finger on the
nuke-yuler button. He is accompanied in his lonely madness by Bill Clinton's
creature, Tony Blair.
Standing next to
each other, Bush and Blair look like a weirdly-morphed version of the
twin writers played by Nicholas Cage in the film Adaptation. (One of
the twins is bright and articulate, one is a successful idiot, and both
end up lost in a swamp, up to their butts in alligators.)
Aligned against
these protagonists, but powerless to stop them, we find France, Russia,
Germany, China, the entire populations of both Old and New Europe, and
the rest of the world's people, from the pope on down.
In a bizarre, meandering
sub-plot we find Nancy Pelosi and most of the Democrats, desperate to
define themselves as "united behind our troops." (As opposed
to defining themselves as united with the millions marching in the streets
around the world.)
Ask yourself this:
what are the odds of George W. "Is Our Children Learning"
Bush being right, even accidentally, on anything, when virtually the
whole planet disagrees with him? Would he have been proved "right"
if he had managed to kill Saddam with his first wild Tomahawk?
It would be the
height of naivete to wonder whether Bush and Blair ever ask themselves
whether they can be right and the whole world wrong. They could care
less what the world thinks. For them, public opinion is something to
be defied when it cannot be manipulated. When it cannot be manipulated,
that is merely a sign that "democracy" has "failed,"
as in the Turkish parliament.
To people like Bush
and Blair, democracy "fails" if it works -- i.e., if it somehow
manages to reflect the will of the people. As the character played by
Michael Caine explains in The Quiet American, the trouble with democracy
is that you let the people vote and they elect Ho Chi Minh.
Now Bush and Blair
propose to bring democracy to Iraq. Never has anything been so transparent
to so many. People with no political sophistication whatever can see
right through what is going on.
As a result, people
everywhere are feeling indescribably frustrated and powerless. They
understand exactly what is going on. They have tried every known peaceable
means to stop this bone-crushing juggernaut and nothing has worked.
Millions of people in the street, the United Nations, the leaders of
the world's most important countries, all have been powerless to stop
Bush.
The more agitated
people feel, the more ready they are to resort to desperate measures,
the more surrealistic the coverage by the corporate media.
As I write these
words, thousands of people are protesting in Portland, Oregon, where
I live. Police are clubbing and tear-gassing some of them. Local television
is describing the situation as primarily a problem for rush-hour commuters.
One channel is using an ex-policeman in a helicopter for "expert
commentary."
Watching the news
these days, no matter what channel, is like listening to the earnest
declarations of druggies. The only difference is whether they are on
a bad trip or a good one. Some of them are angry and belligerent. The
rest of them are visibly relieved when they get through the hard news
(with all the hard words and unpronounceable foreign names) and work
their way down to the "human interest" stories they are more
comfortable with. Anyone with a reputation for actually reporting facts
is kept as far from the action as possible.
Most of the anchors
seem to have just arrived from the set of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
They talk as though they actually believe they are describing nothing
more than a struggle between good and evil, a battle between a "coalition
of the willing" and "world-wide terrorism."
They appear to have
no idea they are really describing a struggle between George W. Bush
(together with everything he represents) and the people of earth.
If you can't follow
the money, follow the spotlight. Watch how the target moves. At first
the enemy was Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar (remember him, anybody?).
Then the enemy was Saddam. Now the enemy seems to be France or even
the Dixie Chicks, anyone who grabs a microphone and vocally opposes
the Will of Bush.
Count on it: Even
if Saddam is killed and Osama captured in the same news cycle, not much
will really change.
Even people who,
long long ago, used to be naïve enough to believe that things would
change if we could swap Bush for Blair can see that now.
Nothing will change
until we change it.
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch.
He can be reached
at: davidvest@springmail.com
For a sneak peek
at Vest's new CD of scorching blues and rock 'n roll, Way Down Here,
visit: http://www.rebelangel.com
Today's Features
Alexander Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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