|
CounterPunch
September
25, 2002
Too True North
by DAVID VEST
With the golden beech leaves falling fast, snow
in the forecast and the equinox hard upon us, it was a toss-up
whether autumn or summer would finish first in Fairbanks this
year. One thing was certain: winter seemed ready to run them
both out of town. Young bull moose wandered the campus of the
University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Literales were everywhere.
As though to counter the Northern Lights,
the Bible Baptists offered an electronic marquee with nothing
subliminal about it. The Gospel message of peace on the night
of our arrival was SADDAM SOLUTION NUKE HIM TILL HE GLOWS THEN
SHOOT HIM IN THE DARK.
It wasn't just tyrants who had to worry
about being shot in the dark. The Daily News-Miner, a pretty
good paper for a town this size, ran a story about the inhibitants
of a Bed & Breakfast who, awakened one night by strange noises
in the parlor and hushed cries of "There's a bear in the
house," split up into parties and walked the dark halls
with flashlights and rifles calling "Here bear, here bear."
 For the
less fearful the News-Miner also described local classes in moose-slaughtering
and butchering, a refreshing alternative to Tai Chi and decoupage.
GUN CONTROL IT'S NOT ABOUT GUNS IT'S
ABOUT CONTROL alternately declared the Bible Baptist marquee.
ALASKA -- WHERE MEN ARE MEN, AND WOMEN
WIN THE IDITAROD proclaimed the t-shirt shops. If you do win
the Iditarod, as Susan Butcher has done four times, you earn
(according to the Riverboat Discovery Gazette) "personal
meetings with Presidents Reagan and Bush, Joint Chiefs Chairman
Colin Powell and General Norman Schwarzkopf."
Since she was eating a hot dog when I
saw her and appeared unable to defend herself, I had my picture
taken with Ms. Butcher. I meant to ask her whether she had ever
met any Democrats, but my own mouth was occupied by a doughnut.
Fortunately, the News-Miner reported
a sighting. A Democratic candidate for the Borough Assembly attended
a weekly Republican luncheon and assured the audience that "she's
not the horrible liberal people think she is."
This is apparently still the local as
well as the national strategy of the Democratic Party: to deny
vigorously that they stand for anything whatever. At least the
people in the B&B had flashlights.
In Interior Alaska, Democrats typically
support drilling in ANWR "because Alaska needs jobs"
and refrain from criticizing execrable but popular Sen. Ted Stevens
"because he's been good for Alaska."
The state's other senator, Republican
gubernatorial candidate Frank Murkowski, has proposed hundred
of millions (if not billions) of dollars in new roads and railroads
across Alaska but bristles when asked how he would pay for them,
with the state facing a fiscal gap of perhaps $1 billion. "If
you can't figure it out, why, you're in trouble," says Murkowski.
The person in most immediate trouble
is his principal opponent, Lt. Gov. Fran Ulmer, who seems to
be employing the Mondale strategy. She promises to raise taxes.
Murkowski is betting that Alaskans would rather bury the North
Slope in sludge than pay more for state services.
Murkowski has spent 22 years representing
Alaska in the U. S. Senate. He will stay there and run for re-election
in 2004 if he loses, as seems unlikely.
Ulmer is certainly no "horrible
environmentalist." She supports oil drilling in ANWR and
is decidedly pro-firearm. She is liberal only to the extent that
she is pro-choice and supports diversifying the state economy
beyond plundering its natural resources as rapidly as possible.
With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?
Meanwhile, David Stannard, a Green Party
candidate for the State Senate, campaigning almost below the
radar, was quietly warning that the "narrowing of democratic
involvement is a very dangerous thing for this society."
I walked the banks of the Chena River
and comforted myself in the thought that Susan Butcher has now
been photographed with Reagan, Bush, Powell, Schwarzkopf and
Vest. Good luck to her in the Yukon Quest.
Other quick impressions:
A long drive up a dirt road that ended
at an Air Force Long Range Radar Station, from where I could
look out toward the Arctic Circle and the Brooks Range. A porcupine
the size of a large grizzly cub lumbering across the highway.
A double rainbow over Fairbanks, and a public library that would
put some universities to shame. A jail with records on microfilm
but nothing to read them with. Teenagers doing a drug deal right
in front of the entrance to my hotel. A man overheard saying
he had never been one to hit women -- unless he felt it was "warranted."
An older woman who pointed our way to a beaver dam in Denali
National Park. A still-bloody freshly-skinned moose head, bungee-strapped
by the rack to a trailer towed by what appeared to be Buffalo
Bill's van.
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. He is a poet
and piano-player for the Pacific Northwest's hottest blues band,
The Cannonballs.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
Today's Features
Gary Leupp
On the
Contemporary Relevance of the Manchurian Incident
Will Youmans
Campus Watch: Vigilante Thought Police
Uri Avnery
The Murder
of Arafat
Steve Hendricks
Wild,
Wild West of Politics:
Being Green in Montana
Philip Farruggio
Democratic
Party Shams
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Another
Oil War
Rev. Robert Bowman
What Would
Jesus Do?
Lawrence Davidson
Web
War Comes to America
Chris Meyer
Six Weeks
of Quiet?
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- Hunting Commie Perverts:
The Scarlet Professor
- DC's Best Political
Mind; DC's Most Dangerous Man;
- Dershowitz the Torturer:
Guess Why He Wants Clean Needles;
- Lese Majeste: That's
Against the Law Too;
- The Greatest Endorsement
AAA Will Ever Get;
- Merle Haggard on Civil
Liberties;
- Dullness Hailed: The Press on the Defeat of McKinney,
Traficant and Barr;
- National Review Puffs
into Town.
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
September
21 / 22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
An Entire
Class
of Thieves
Tom Gorman
The Press & Sabra
and Shatila
Amelia Peltz
Anniversary with Life
in Palestine
Susan Martinez
By the Hand
of the Father
Ben Tripp
Advice from
a Polemicist
Adam Engel
From Above:
Forgetting bin Laden
Chris Clarke
The Ann Coulter Test
Tariq Ali
Doing as the
Romans Did
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Bush Victory
in Iraq
Ralph Nader
Greed Without Limits
Thomas Croft
The Life of Jim Cummings
Anthony Gancarski
Concerned Citizen:
a serialized Novel,
Episode One
Wolff, Dailey, Metres
& St. Clair
Poet's Basement
September
20, 2002
Joan Hoff
Debating
War:
the Forgotten Tradition
Norman Madarasz
Lessons from a Cyncial Master Jean
Chretien's
New York State of Mind
Mitchel Cohen
Toxic Wastes
and
the New World Order
Peter Lee
Why Bush
Wants This War
Bruce Jackson
20 Questions
About Bush's
War Against Arabs
Krystal Kyer
Greenwashing the Marketplace
September
19, 2002
Ron Jacobs
Cheney's
Vermont Breakfast
Ilija Trojanow
/ Ranjit Hoskote
Who Cares
for Human Rights?
It's a "Just" War
Jordy Cummings
How
to Silence
Pro Palestinian Voices
Salam Rahal
The Rape
of a Nation
Richard Falk
& David Krieger
War with
Iraq:
It's Not Bush's Decision
Ralph Nader
How Congress
Can Fight Corporate Crime
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Senior:
Hating Saddam, Selling Him Weapons
September
18, 2002
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun
of a Hatchet Job
Peggy Thomson
20 Years
After:
Sabra and Shatila
Thomas Mountain
September
1982
Sabra and Chatila (Poem)
William Cook
Yet Another
Bush Doctrine
Kathleen Christison
Israel's Other Voices
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!)
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
|