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June 19, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
The
Incredible Shrinking President
June 18, 2002
David Vest
Raise the
White Flag in Terror War?
Ben White
Is It Possible
to "Understand" the Rise in "Anti-Semitism"?
Edward Said
Palestinian
Elections Now
June 17, 2002
Jack McCarthy
Watergate
and All That
Philip Farruggio
A Maximum
Wage Law
Ron Sullivan
Law
and Orders:
The Assault on Trial by Jury
Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch
Taking
on the School
of the Americas
Joan Smith
G.W. Bush:
The Man is Stupid
Dave Marsh
Corporate
Buy Outs and the Decline of Teen Jive
Robert Jensen
Rhetoric
Distorts Realities
June 15 / 16, 2002
Tanweer Akram
A Review
of Noam Chomsky's 9-11
Daniel Wolff
The Day
They Shot a Wolf in the Ghetto and What It Meant
Ralph Nader
A Corporate
Crime State
David Vest
Have You
Been Serviced?
Karl Kraus
A Minor
Detail
Alexander Cockburn
The
Terrorism of Everyday Life
June 14, 2002
Mark Weisbrot
US Trade
Policy:
"Do as We Say, Not as We Did"
Starhawk
The Boy Who Kissed the Soldier
David Krieger
Farewell
to the ABM Treaty
Tom Turnipseed
The Fear Factor to Promote
War and Trample Truth
Steve Perry
How the
Bush Adminstration Buried Coleen Rowley
June 13, 2002
Linda Belanger
Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict:
The Story Behind the Headlines
Amira Hass
Indefinite
Siege
Mokhiber / Weissman
Time to Put Lives Over Patents
Robert Fisk
Bush's Weird
War
Stanton / Madsen
Democracy
in Crisis:
What is to be Done?
Roldan Tomasz Suárez
Venezuela:
Five Facts
About the Coup
June 12, 2002
Fran Shor
Dirty Bombs, Blowback
and Imperial Projections
Dave Marsh
Shelley
Stewart, Radio and the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Chris Floyd
Murder, Inc.
June 11, 2002
Omar Barghouti
On Dance, Identity and War
Robert Fisk
The Bush
Afghan Gang:
Murderers, Gangsters, Stooges
Minerva Wright
The Donkeys of the Holy Land
David Krieger
Stopping
a Nuclear War
in South Asia
June 10, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
Executioner's Last Songs
June 8/9, 2002
Gavin Keeney
Mademoiselle
M.
Or Getting Screwed in Paris
Susan Davis
Sleepless
in the Suburbs
Curing Insomnia: a new use for The Nation?
George Sunderland
"Send
in the Weekly
Standard": The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
June 7, 2002
Michael Colby
Bush to the Nation:
You're All Cops Now
Tanweer Akram
Howard
Zinn's "Terrorism
and War": a review
David Krieger
New Security Challenges
Sam Bahour
The Palestinian
Intifada:
A Very American Struggle
Tom Turnipseed
A Crisis of Confidence
in US Leadership
June 6, 2002
Michael Colby
White House
vs. EPA:
Political Hot Air and
Global Warming
Ron Jacobs
The Indo-Pakistan Conflict:
It's Just a Shot Away
Francis Boyle
Take Sharon
to The Hague:
Prosecute Israeli War Crimes
at Jenin
CounterPunch Bulletin
60 Minutes and President Chavez's
Censored F-Word
Mark Weisbrot
Spying
and Lying:
The FBI's Shameful Past
June 5, 2002
Robert Fisk
Berlusconi the Censor
Danielle Brian
Nuclear
Plants and Terrorism
Ardeshir Cowasjee
For What Do We Fight?
George Monbiot
Kashmir
on the Brink
Michael Neumann
What is Antisemitism?
June 4, 2002
Dave Marsh
Bono the Useful Idiot
William Evan / Francis
Boyle
Kashmir:
Invoking Intl. Law to Avoid Nuclear War
Cockburn / St. Clair
The Future Wellstone Deserves
June 3, 2002
Ramdas / Makhijani
India,
Pakistan and Nukes:
A Road Map to Peace
Fran Shor
Meanwhile, Back in Afghanistan
Neve Gordon
The Caterpillar
Effect
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 March 15, 2002
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
|
June 19,
2002
A Peak Inside
Dick Cheney's Diary
Cakewalking
Through the Minefields
by Bernard Weiner
I can't believe how easy it all has been. We true-blue
conservatives chose a candidate -- thank you, Poppy! -- shoehorned
him into the White House, took our lumps as he demonstrated that
he's, how shall we say, a bit short on lunchmeat; survived the
Jeffords debacle (damn you, Karl!), and got everything back on
track again as a result of 9/11.
True, there have been some notable bumps
in the road, with more to come, but on the whole, it's been a
cakewalk. Ladies and gentlemen, in accepting this award I need
to thank a number of folks, without whom none of this would have
been possible: Ralph Nader, Kathleen & Jeb & Jim &
Karen, our HighFivers on the Supreme Court, Daschle & Gephardt
for keeping their troops in line, Osama & the Suicide Bombers
(not a bad name for a rock band, dontcha think?), Afafat &
Sharon and India & Pakistan (those bloodthirsty idiots kept
our scandals off the front page, thank you very much), the anthrax
dispenser, and so many more. Including Clinton; whenever our
supporters need a political punching bag, Bubba is always usable
for a few more jabs.
And last, but by no means least, the
media. Who woulda thought they could be so easily bought, coerced,
manipulated, fooled, comfortably in our pockets? Thank God for
the multimedia mergers of the '90s. Now our corporate friends
own the largest papers and chains and TV networks. No more investigative
reporting a la Watergate these days, thank God. And besides,
and this is the best part, ordinary citizens are not the least
bit interested!!!!! It can't get better than this.
And whatever our side can't control outright,
we can control with one word. In the Cold War days, it was "communism."
Today, all we have to say is "terrorism." In neither
case were we making it up out of whole cloth; there were dastardly
communists and there are maniacal terrorists. So we barely have
to do anything, except keep reminding folks of how awful and
dangerous these fanatics are. Once we do that, the media and
the public just go into fright mode. (Rather looked positively
ridiculous early on as he covered his liberal ass with patriotic
fervor!). Ashcroft, despite his naked ambition and spotlight-hogging,
makes a formidable bogeyman: Watch what you say and do and think
or Big John will come getcha and lock you away in a black-hole
detention camp. That guy scares even me; no wonder he lost his
re-election race to a dead man.
This terrorist-fright thing is working
like a charm. Everybody is so scared to come at us with a frontal
attack -- the Democrats are like confused pussycats confronting
a giant rat, with no earthly idea how to proceed -- and so they
just chip away at the edges, which we can handle easily, since
the public is taking no note of anything we say or do, no matter
how outrageous. Like I say, it's a cakewalk.
Want to know my favorite part, diary?
I've virtually disappeared from sight, and nobody's put two and
two together; even comedians' jokes about me have no relation
to what I'm really doing. They make cracks about my being "hidden
away in a bunker." When you can avoid getting slammed frontally
by Leno and Letterman and Maher and Stewart, things are going
just fine. Either they (or their writers) are blind, or they're
frightened; either way, their horns get pulled in.
Lynne and Lieberman made sure the liberal
professors got the message, and so the campuses are basically
silent as well. And the lawyers. And the Nobel Prize winners.
No full-page ads in the Times and Post denouncing our policies,
or even the direction we're going. We're home free. All we have
to do is to pick on one notorious lawyer or journalist or campus,
and everyone then understands what the limits are on dissent.
(And the same goes for our allies abroad; we can do whatever
the hell we want to do. Oh sure, they grumble and complain, but
who are they? We're the only -- can you hear that, Frenchies,
the ONLY! -- superpower and they'd better behave themselves.
God, this is a wonderful time to be an American! And to be President,
if you get my drift.)
Fright is a dynamic motivating force.
We planned on its working for us, but had no idea how well it
would work. Thanks to the bin Laden air force, of course. We
thought he would hijack an airplane or two and crash them into
something symbolic like the Statue of Liberty or Golden Gate
Bridge or something, or maybe even into the top floors of the
World Trade Center. In other words, a few hundred dead Americans
and lots of damage. But they must have done their homework well;
even they were surprised at how easy it was to collapse the Twin
Towers once the steel got melted by the fireball. Suddenly, a
few hundred turned into thousands of dead. That, and the Pentagon,
were terrible tragedies, but, as it turned out, good for us.
Upped the fright level considerably.
Bush could then declare a State of Emergency
(which we've never rescinded, of course); Ashcroft could ram
the PATRIOT act through the Congress in a few days -- those fools
didn't even have the brains or guts to call for full hearings
on how the Constitution would be affected! -- and off we went.
A few namby-pamby liberals and civil libertarians complained,
of course, but nobody was listening. Everyone just wanted us
to get the bastards.
Nobody seemed to notice that the plans
for that war already had been drawn up, and, within a few weeks,
bombs were raining down on Afghanistan. Get those bastards. A
piece of cake.
Not that we're out of the woods. There
are hurdles to get through. Some Democrats and moderate, sell-out
Republicans are starting to ask pointed questions. Usually, all
we have to do is to remind them how it will look to be seen as
"unpatriotic" or "pro-terrorism" come election
day, and they back off.
Enron could still blow up in my face;
the word is out that Libby sold energy stocks while I was formulating
the policy with the energy companies, and there's the Afghan
pipeline deal, and so on. If we can keep them away from the documents,
and the Halliburton stuff, we might bravado it out. So far, we've
been able to keep the anthrax facts contained, but scientists
are starting to point fingers at the culprit, and it isn't good
for our side. (Nor is the fact that my staff and I were given
Cipro to take on September 11th...a week before the anthrax letters
were even mailed. But our spin is that it was "precautionary"
because of "the terrorists.")
The big one, of course, is pre-9/11 knowledge.
There's too much out there, especially on the internet, revealing
how much we really knew a huge attack was coming and how we prepared
in advance for its impact so that we could get our program implemented
once fear permeated the nation. It's all so confusing to the
general public, and our "it's-the-fault-of-the-system"
approach and our story-diversion program are working like gangbusters.
(The "dirty bomb" story was a classic; we were off
the hook again, as the media and Congress swallowed the bait.
Didn't matter that it was old news, and really no news -- the
guy hadn't even done anything yet.)
America WANTS to be in denial, I tell
you; talk about a Teflon effect: NOTHING sticks to us! I have
a theory that if the public knew what we were really up to, they'd
have to think about drastically shaking up the political system
-- I've even heard the "impeachment" word being used
on the internet -- and they just don't want to deal with any
more chaos right now. So we get a free ride -- what a country!
I'm starting to understand how Clinton
must have felt in the latter days, bouncing like a pinball from
one potential disaster to another. But his scandal involved sex
and everyone was riveted; ours is just the tired, old Republican
profit motive, and nobody seems to give a good goddamn about
constitutional niceties. Just give us some peace and quiet, get
the terrorist bastards.
I think we'll be OK, if we can get through
the next few months. Then, sometime before the November elections,
there probably will be -- in fact, I'd say we can pretty much
guarantee it -- another terrorist attack on the U.S. mainland.
(Along with our own attack on Iraq.) And, guess what? We're the
war party, going after the bastards, Bush looks good, the GOP
candidates grab onto the coattails and we're back in power in
Congress, and those Democrats go back to their caves and have
to figure out another way of getting us in 2004. But, guess what?
The war on terrorism will still be playing, and we'll still be
the ones in charge. Hot damn, this is fun!
Bernard Weiner,
who was the San Francisco Chronicle's theater critic for nearly
20 years, is a playwright and poet. Holder of a Ph.D. in government
& international relations, he has taught at various universities,
and published in The Nation, Village Voice and CounterPunch.
Today's
Features
Alexander Cockburn
The
Incredible Shrinking President
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