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January
1, 2002
Kathy
Kelly
Iraq's
New Year
December
31, 2001
John Absood
An
Alternative to War in Iraq
Ramzi
Kysia
Iraq
Goes Radioactive
December
28, 2001
John Chuckman
Observing
George Bush
Suren
Pillay
Civilian
Bodies
Aaron
Lehmer
Inviting
Future Terrorism
December
27, 2001
Patrick
McNamara
Palestinian
Children Bear Brunt of Mideast Violence
Nelson
Valdés
A
Possible Scenario on the Location of bin Laden
Jensen
and Mahajan
Remember
the Afghan Dead
Philip
Farruggio
A
New Year's Resolution
Ramzi
Kysia
The
People of the Valley
December 26, 2001
John Chuckman
In
Praise of the Unspeakable
Sam Bahour
2002:
Year of the Twos
December 25, 2001
Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's
Human Rights Record
December 24, 2001
Sam Bahour
It
Happened One Morning
Yair Khilou
Why I Resisted
Being Drafted into the Israeli Army
Michael
Chisari
War
as Diversionary Tactic
Cockburn/St. Clair
Enron
and the Green Seal
December 21, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
War
Good for Bush
John Chuckman
The
First Victim in the
War on Terror
December 20, 2001
Lawrence
McGuire
Killing
Other People's Children
Miriam Rozen
Foundation
Without Representation?
Kenneth
Roth
A
Letter to Rumsfeld on
Military Tribunals
William Blum
Casualties:
Theirs and Ours
December 19, 2001
Marjorie
Cohn
Don't
Pre-Judge John Walker
Sam Bahour
Palestine
and You
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!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
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 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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January
1, 2002
2001: If Only Ovid
Were Here
Turn, Turn, Turn
By David Vest
Everything became a kind of everything else in
2001.
New York City turned into Pearl Harbor.
Bob Dylan turned into Vincent Price. By year's end, Dan Rather
looked and even sounded exactly like Jerry Falwell. It was incredible.
Even the hair. Perhaps it was the three days Rather spent "covering"
the war in Afghanistan that aged him so.
Then Geraldo Rivera turned Tora Bora
into Al Capone's tomb. There was nothing worth finding or filming
in either one of them. Too bad, because "Tora Bora"
would have made a great movie title.
While Geraldo and his team of hairdressers
searched bravely for Kabul, Osama bin Laden escaped or died or
something. Either way, his "escape" could conceivably
translate into a perception of victory (among those disposed
to follow him) almost as dramatic as the original TV shots of
the twin towers falling.
Then the war itself disappeared from
TV faster than bin Laden disappeared from Tora Bora. One minute
he was on the radio, next minute he was gone. It was the same
thing with the war on CNN and Fox. One minute it was all-war-all-the-time,
next minute it was nowhere to be found. Ok, not quite literally
true, but neither was much of anything you heard on TV.
Take, for example, the extreme glorification
of the Administration's team of "leaders" for the way
in which they "united a nation." Was it really Condoleeza
Rice who united the nation? Or was it more likely Osama bin Laden
who united it by attacking it?
Most surprisingly, "Dubya"
turned into "The President" by addressing a joint session
of Congress and declaring war on al Qaeda, an organization whose
name he had obviously learned to pronounce earlier that same
day. At least he didn't call them "al Gore." (Ever
wonder what Dubya's nickname for bin Laden is?)
Speaking of Gore, imagine that Saturday
Night Live had been around when Lincoln was president. That's
what Gore turned into. His ever-shifting caricature of himself
(college professor, financier, Great Emancipator) put anyone
else's to shame.
2001 was full of self-caricatures. Paul
McCartney smoked a lot of dope, dressed his band in matching
tee-shirts (after a quick phone call to find out what the kids
are wearing these days?) and turned all of New York City into
back-up singers for his toss-off song, "Freedom," which
he performed not once but twice on a TV special (enough pot does
that sort of thing to you).
Mick Jagger released a new album and
a documentary about himself, probably turning Keith Richard into
a howling, coughing bowl of shaking jellied aspic, assuming he
even heard about these projects (hardly anyone did until the
news story about how the album had sold 19 or so copies in its
first week of release).
Puff Daddy explained everything by turning
into P. Diddy. Gary Condit turned into that car salesman from
Fargo.
Perhaps the most appalling transformation
was suffered by Mariah Carey, whose record contract made some
of baseball's free-agent signings look modest. Then she scat-sang
at the nation while it was trying to hear Willie Nelson play
his guitar, enabling everyone to finally tell the difference
between her and Celine Dion.
Barry Bonds turned from baseball's enfant
terrible to an icon. "How can you not love him now?"
instructed the announcers as he rounded third base with his record-breaking
homer.
Elsewhere, stories about cops gunning
down unarmed people, broom-raping immigrants and lying about
it turned into daily profiles of courage in the papers.
Enron turned into pixel dust. Enron employees
suddenly looked like refugees from Nasdaqistan. Enron executives
turned from "good corporate citizens" into people unwelcome
in any neighborhood.
Other transformations were less attention-getting.
Ralph Stanley turned into a mainstream star without appearing
to notice it. And Ralph Nader turned from presidential candidate
into the Invisible Man, disappearing soon at a small independent
bookstore near you.
David Vest
is a regular writer for CounterPunch, a poet and piano-player
for the Pacific Northwest's hottest blues band, The Cannonballs.
Visit his website at http://www.mindspring.com/~dcqv
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