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October
8, 2001
Mahajan
and Jensen
A
War of Lies
Patrick
Cockburn
Northern
Alliance
Builds an Airport
October
7, 2001
John Pilger
Hitchens'
Slurs
Tariq
Ali
Who
Said History
Stopped Being Ironical?
October
6, 2001
Vijay
Prashad
US
War Aims
Kevin
Gray
The
Trap:
Blacks and 9/11
October
5, 2001
Ronnie
Gilbert
Déjà
Vu: The FBI's War
on Civil Liberties
Patrick
Cockburn
Taliban
Cluster Bombs
Dave
Marsh
John
Brown, Woody Guthrie
and the Secret Music of 9/11
Babak
Nahid
A
Suspect's Perspective
October
4, 2001
David
Vest
Send
in the Cons
Robin
Blackburn
Road
to Armageddon
Noam
Chomsky
Chatting
with Chomsky
Tony
Blair
The
Dossier on bin Laden
Norman
Madarasz
Canada
Kow-Tows to US
Lorenzo Ervin
No Palestinian
Ever
Called Me Nigger
October
3, 2001
Peter Bell
Hitchens
and Coulter:
Love at Last?
Patrick
Cockburn
Waiting
Is the Hardest Part
Jeff
Chang
Clear
Channel Fires
Davey D!
John Chuckman
War
on Terror:
Crusade Without a Definition
Mahajan/Jensen
Tough
Talk Won't Solve
Problems of Terrorism
Ariel
Dorfman:
America
the Wounded
Lennie
Brenner
Dr.
Watson in Afghanistan
Steve
Perry:
Ashcroft's
Scare Tactics
October
2, 2001
Patrick
Cockburn:
Inside
an Afghan Hospital
Richard
Manning:
A
Vietnam Vet on Patriotism
St. Clair/Cockburn:
Tarnished
Star,
Tom Ridge in Vietnam
October
1, 2001
Noam
Chomsky:
Memo
to Hitchens
Hizam
Bitar:
Refuting
Michael Kinsley
David Grenier:
The
Good, The Bad,
and the Ugly
Douglas
Valentine:
Homeland
Insecurity
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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8-Page Special
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Aftermath
Diary
Ashcroft's Onslaught
on
Civil Liberties
Ridge Long Groomed
for
Cheney's Job
Those CIA Killing
Bids
Never Stopped
The Not-So-Great
Mayor Giuliani
Crop Duster
Ban
Will Save Lives
Madeleine Albright's
Deadly Legacy
How the Bin
Laden Women
Fled Bel Air
Tom Ridge's
Vietnam
Same as Kerrey's?
A CounterPunch
Journey
to Ramallah
A Word About
God
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James
Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas
Valentine
Al
Gore:
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by Cockburn
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October 9,
2001
Marginalization and Terror
By Zha
Am I angry when 50- and 60-year-old
congressional legislators say in television interviews say that
the anti-war protests of 20-something university students are
invalid because those students lack the perspective of living
through the Vietnam war?
Yes I am.
Discussing this with my mom,
she suggested that people of her generation and older had the
disadvantage of lacking the long-term personal investment of
someone who is going to have to live through the results of
all this shit for another 80 years. My government is not representative
of me, in part because there is no one from my generation who
has direct input in the decision-making process. Why does government
discriminate so heavily with regard to age? Because of the myth
that wisdom is always gained with age? Please.
I know twenty-three-year-olds
who know more about politics, relationships, love, intuition,
rational thinking, and who have more wisdom than most people
3 to 4 times their age. I do think time is a resource across
which some gain wisdom, and therefore many wise people are in
the elder generations. But many people in elder generations
are not wise. And many young people understand and learn more
in their short tenure than has the aged inheritants of power
in our governments demonstrate they have seen or learned. But
who knows this? Only those who are themselves unusually insightful.
The masses do not know this. A voting majority does not know
this. Henrik Ibsen said "The majority is always wrong.
Always." And what he meant by that is that the best, most
useful, wisest, stellar choices and opinions, due to their extraordinary
makeup, always elude the majority of thinkers; hence, because
the best ideas are not (easily) tenable by most people, the
best ideas will not be agreed upon by a majority, thus the best
possible choices will never be made through democratic process.
The democratic process is not friendly to unusually bright suggestions.
Unusually bright (or otherwise odd) suggestions must be trumpeted
by a different horn. What is that horn? Among others, literature,
propaganda, peaceful demonstrations, and terrorism.
You see, terrorists and the
profoundly judicious share a common bond: most people aren't
listening to what they have to say. They are marginalized by
societies and states. There is no way for their voices to be
heard through the regular channels. If there was a forum for
their frustration, a way for them to participate in the decision-making
process of their world, then they would have no need to resort
to extreme means to make their voices heard. If their need to
speak and be heard is denied, then they will take the stage by
force, will incite attention to their cause by, as many have
said, any means necessary. Artists do this; they operate in
a world where most people are not trained to understand in the
way that they do, where most people do not have the sensitivity
to feel what they feel. As a result, the majority always initially
misunderstands their methods of self-expression. A majority,
I will add, whose grandchildren will honor in museums the very
same works their ancestors censored and felt threatened by.
Rudolph Guliani, hailed by
our precious majority as a national hero, has demonstrated his
lack of wisdom regarding this ancient issue in his attempts
to censor prominent New York City art museums by withholding
public funding because the museums chose to exhibit work that
many scholars consider brilliant expressions and some less-educated
people found offensive. The art community took the stage in
creative ways to respond to Guliani's own incarnation of barbarism.
One is chronicled by an Australian Broadcasting Corporation
website:
"New York is about to
experience a new Sensation - a follow up to the exhibition that
Mayor Rudolph Guiliani tried to put a stop to last year. You
may recall he was particularly offended by a picture of the
Virgin Mary adorned with elephant dung. Well, this time, in
a show soon to open at the Whitney Museum's Biennial there's
an elephant dung smeared portrait of Guiliani himself . It's
part of a most unflattering work by a New York artist which
depicts the Mayor as a Nazi, with framed quotes by Guiliani
next to a copy of the First Amendment, all accompanied by the
sound of marching jackboots. The Whitney Museum does not rely
on public funding - your move Mr Guiliani."
Rudolph Guiliani is not a hero.
His mayoral censorship endeavors are frighteningly akin to the
international policies of global superpowers that have so marginalized
and disenfranchised poor people in countries all over the world,
including their own. Guliani's economic sanctions against institutional
cultural pillars marginalize artists in the same way that socially-average
schoolchildren marginalized the suicide attackers of Columbine
and the same way that the most powerful countries of the world
have desolated, starved, and generally marginalized less powerful
countries to the point that their people are ripe to be converted
into disciples of terrorist leaders.
It is crazy to think that a
country led by people who are so willing to censor their own
citizens' pinnacle forms of self-expression is likely to arrive
at an optimal solution to the problem: What Role Should We Play
in a World where Terrorists Exist? Many of our leaders have
repeatedly shown that at the very least they do not comprehend
the workings of systemic marginalization. Some of them have
demonstrated that they are not even aware of such forces of
cause-and-effect. Our leaders keep saying this is not a conventional
war. Even though its face differs slightly from those of past
military campaigns, I find it quite conventional indeed; it
is a symptom-treating measure that blatantly disregards the
root causes of terrorism. It is a momentary stopgap at best,
and probably one that will have long-term effects that are exactly
the opposite of our stated superobjective.
Where is this type of discussion
taking place among you, the chiefs of my tribe? Is this type
of analysis being performed by my elders who wish to discredit
the protests of my peers, citing our lack of perspective? Do
you not heap upon yourselves the very fate you are trying to
avoid by refusing to listen to the voices of those who are crying
out against your foolishness and lack of insight? And do you
not, by marginalizing the critical thinkers of your own country,
personally invite more severe demonstrations from those whose
voices you would silence? These voices cannot, will not, be ignored
forever. With each new denial and each new insult they do grow
louder and stronger and are bound by necessity to rely on more
and more extreme measures in order to be heard over the roar
of your ignorance. CP
http://www.inhesion.com/
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