Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $11.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
January 19, 2004
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
January
19, 2004
SOTUS
The
Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
By WERTHER
For those Americans planning to inflict the president's
State of the Union Speech [SOTUS] upon their eyes, ears, and
cerebra, some historical information and international comparison
are in order. Article II, Section 3 of our deceased Constitution
prescribes that the president "shall from time to time give
the Congress information of the State of the Union..."
In the American republic's benighted
pre-empire period, the chief executive construed this provision
to mean that he should arrange a written message to be delivered
to his fellow wardheelers at the opposite end of Pennsylvania
Avenue. While this sufficed for men of small vision who did not
share Bill Kristol's hallucinations of National Greatness, it
was obvious that changes were required as the twentieth century
dawned. Our first messianic president, a man truly suited to
the nascent empire, was Woodrow Wilson. It was he who determined
that the message should be delivered in person by the God-Emperor
himself.
Still, these orational messages were
relatively decorous affairs at first. As recently as the 1960s,
the pols in their seats maintained a measure of dignity. Evidently
they were conscious, however dimly, of constituting a co-equal
branch of government.
For instance, Lyndon Johnson's 1964 SOTUS
was delivered only two months after the expiration of the sainted
JFK; in such circumstances, one could expect an emotional "rally
'round the president" outburst. As well, a majority in the
chamber were members of the president's own party, and they could
be expected to strongly favor anything he proposed. Morever,
he was addressing such lugubrious topics as his "unconditional
war on poverty" (little did we know that "poverty"
was Lyndon's codeword for "Vietnam," and that "war"
was not a metaphor). Yet the Thors and Wotans of the legislative
branch managed to restrain themselves in the applause department
in a manner that would seem downright comatose today.
It was in the 1980s that the SOTUS degenerated
into a hybrid of an evangelical medicine show, Hollywood schmaltz
act, and Nuremburg Rally. As the chamber had a fair representation
of anthropoid members like the hebephrenic Bob Dornan, the flag-worshiping
Gerald B.H. Solomon, and Ole Miss cheerleader Trent Lott, Ronald
Reagan could hardly be faulted for wanting to give them a performance
worthy of King's Row.
At around that time another element of
the imperial SOTUS began to be a regular feature: the emotional
prop in the gallery. Since then a battalion of wounded soldiers,
plucky-ex welfare moms, inner-city pedagogues, and Lazarus-like
recoverers from fatal affliction has tugged at the national heartstrings.
In recent times, members of the president's
party have often caucused informally beforehand to warm up for
the pep rally and remind each other about which themes they should
applaud most thunderously. They also rehearse their lines whereby
they tell reporters that the president's outpouring was the finest
speech since Pericles' funeral oration. The applause, which occurs
after virtually every sentence the president utters, constitutes
about 40 percent of the length of the speech.
The speeches themselves are grimly formulaic.
They are studded with scores of contradistinctions in apposition
("we must move forward, not backward!"). The speech
writers, in their obscene humor, insert dozens of weak puns and
plays on words ("mushrooming scientific knowledge must not
become a mushroom cloud"). Failed policies of the past must
give way to bold new solutions for the future. America is the
twinkling star in the firmament. Heathen foreigners cannot possibly
grasp how wise, generous and good the American people are.
Substantively, the SOTUS is a catalogue
of bogus miracles and do-goodism run riot: cancer cures, colonization
of the known universe, every child an Isaac Newton, free Lipitor
for the geezers, marriage counseling for the, you know, lesser
breeds. At the same time, however, America's enemies are legion,
and for some mysterious reason they want to destroy us. Fear
not, our virtuous soldiers will scatter the foe like chaff. Once-evil
Babylon will rise again in divine grace, thanks to our healing
touch. After an anecdotal nod to the Joe Blow in the gallery,
the speech takes its rote course, a mass of treacly balderdash
heaving and wheezing its way to an orgasmic climax.
In older, more settled cultures these
performances must be startling. Traditional Japan also regarded
its chief magistrate as a God-Emperor. Consonant with His Majesty's
dignity, however, he did not do anything so vulgar as to broadcast
his voice to the public. The mass of the Japanese people had
never heard Hirohito's voice throughout the entire world war
they waged on his behalf. Imagine their confusion when, after
the atomic obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he took to
the air waves to inform them that "the situation has taken
a course not necessarily to Japan's advantage." Note the
decorous sense of understatement, a rhetorical flourish unknown
in the SOTUS.
But there are other cultures in which
the SOTUS ritual is a perfect fit: intensely ideologized countries
where discourse is inseparable from a pep-rally, where mandatory
cheerfulness is the order of the day. The archetype of such a
system is the Soviet Union, particularly under the firm but loving
guidance of the Georgian visionary, J.V. Stalin. Even the acronym
SOTUS (so lovingly invoked by West Wing bureaucrats) recalls
crisp, businesslike abbreviations like AMTORG, GOSPLAN and CHEKA
that were in vogue under the late marshal.
As a former seminarian, he knew better
than to call for a separation of church and state. The state
was the church. And the chief liturgical ceremony was the leader's
speech. Who needs cheerleaders from Ole Miss and Texas Christian
when the NKVD is present in the chamber, ensuring that the thunderclap
of applause never slackens? Indeed, so prolonged were these outburst
that eventually Stalin had a buzzer installed at the podium so
that he could signal to the delegates that their applause was
of sufficient duration.
But prior to this technological intervention,
one of these party clambakes got out of hand. As related in Solzhenitsyn's
Gulag Archipelago: "For three minutes, four minutes, five
minutes, the 'stormy applause, rising to an ovation,' continued.
But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching.
And the older people were panting with exhaustion. It was becoming
insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin. However,
who would dare be the first to stop?" Finally, after eleven
minutes, one of the party hacks "assumed a businesslike
expression and sat down in his seat." The applause stopped.
The hack got 10 years in the Gulag.
It is well to keep Solzhenitsyn's anecdote
in mind for the upcoming SOTUS. In the 10 December Insight Magazine
(official organ of the Unification Church), J. Michael Waller
ponders whether opponents of administration policy--including
sitting members of Congress--are treasonous and thereby subject
to arrest, imprisonment, and (presumably) execution. Waller,
Ann Coulter, Mona Charen, and a whole tribunal of yahoo Vishinskys
can be expected to assess a legislator's putative treason of
the basis of his enthusiasm--or lack thereof--for the Leader's
pronouncements at the SOTUS. The Fox cameras, we may be sure,
will examine Hillary's demeanor just as 1984's telescreen probed
Winston Smith for the smallest sign of crimethink.
*Werther is the pen name of a Northern
Virginia-based defense analyst
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|