March 30, 2003
people are so easily suckered
Molly Ivins reminds us in The Progressive this month that, in spite of his other failings, Hermann Goering was no fool. While under arrest in Nuremburg in 1946 the Nazi leader told an interviewer, "Why of course the people don't...
yes, I sound like an extremist
And that's fine with me. Sam, of Pedantry [via Alas, a Blog], has a great take on Barry Goldwater's most famous epigram, "Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."It...
I'm back
The household has been delightfully distracted for five days while the perfect mother-out-of-law visited us this past week. It was also a healthy diversion from a virtually full-time obsession with, well, that damn elephant in the parlor....
March 24, 2003
"we" must certainly be losing, no?
Could any report on this, the sixth day of the slaughter in this unjust war, be more revealing of the failure of American journalism, even of America? This is the actual NYTimes headline, spread in two horizontal lines across all...
March 23, 2003
"I don't know why they don't just surrender"
Sometimes there's no temptation to comment on a news story.NEAR NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Burned-out vehicles and incinerated bodies littered a plain in central Iraq on Sunday after U.S. forces overwhelmed Iraqi militia fighters in a battle south of the...
THINGS ARE NOT GOING WELL, FOR ANYONE
So what are we supposed to look forward to now? It's hard to avoid asking the question. Of course I'm referring to how things are going to play out here in the U.S., in the Middle East and throughout the...
fascism
This is just too good to resist borrowing a bit from Bloggy's more extensive commentary:From Britannica Concise: fascism: Philosophy of government that stresses the primacy and glory of the state, unquestioning obedience to its leader, subordination of the individual will...
March 22, 2003
we can't stop now
I walked through Manhattan today for four hours carrying a sign, "US OUT OF NY," meaning that for its own survival the city must immediately try to sever itself from a national government whose policies both increase the threat of...
through the glass, but very darkly
Peter Freundlich thinks "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" should not be the models for American foreign policy.Listen. Don't misunderstand. I think it is a good thing that the members of the Bush administration seem to have...
March 21, 2003
bully mows down neighbor kid in kid's yard
These are two borrowings from Bloggy, combined here as one post.Minutes before the [March 19] speech, an internal television monitor at the White House showed the President pumping his fist. "Feels good," he said.This was two nights ago, just after...
but this war was to reduce the risk of terrorism here
Ellis Henican writes in Newsday today,Rand Beers, the top terror-fighting official at the National Security Council, stepped down this week, just as the first missiles were being readied for launch. Officially, he resigned for "personal reasons." But close associates were...
U.S. out of New York!
The U.S. is destroying New York City. What wasn't accomplished on September 11, 2001 [and some day we may learn to what extent it was not just Washington's incompetence but even its design which was responsible for those blows] is...
even Mary is a guy thing
I haven't been able to just walk away from the distressing experience of last night's religious assault at BAM, John Adams' "El Niño." The story of the piece was in fact not that of the niño or child, but the...
will their trucks sport doves in diamonds and gold?
Yesterday in the Daily News "Rush & Molloy" included a small item reporting that Cadillac, which is the exclusive provider of cars for the Academy Awards this year, offering attendees the choice of a standard sedans or a monster truck,...
man begins to lose it
A friend writes that a re-reading of George Orwell's "1984" suggests that the administration has been using it as a road map, but it was an old [copyright 1961] afterword written by Erich Fromm which really took him aback. An...
the world is very very mad
Bloggy has some good photos of the demonstrations responding to the first day of the Iraq massacre. including a couple of Barry's own New York scenes and others in links from around the world....
Oscar goes lame
This is not a political statement. This is a hedge, this is a feelgood thing, this is a fashion statement, nothing more. Thursday in the "Business Day" section of the NYTimes we learned that "Hollywood's decision to roll up the...
John Adams' "El Niño"
Don't go! It's a trap. A religious cult has abducted John Adams and forced him to create a monstrosity, called "El Niño," which opened in New York tonight at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Unfortunately our city will be subjected...
March 20, 2003
a new blacklist descends over the land
We have a new blacklist. Right now it's only about a party, but sometimes party matters. Certain film people known to be opposed to the massacre in Iraq have been forbidden any opportunity to air their views during the ceremonies...
we are damned, if not god-damned
I'm an atheist, so I cannot say, "God damn this country," even if I wanted to, but I can certainly say that we have damned ourselves today, perhaps irredeemably. Only hours ago we started to rain bombs upon and began...
March 19, 2003
Metternich at least had a brain,
but how do we explain the success of the engineers of our own age of repression? Bloggy argues they're even beyond satire. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has banned the broadcast media from a ceremony in Cleveland today where he...
taxpayers will be enriching Bush's friends in postwar Iraq
Mindful of the sad course of events in Afghanistan, lefties have been appropriately sceptical about the administration's commitment to a postwar Iraq, but I guess we can now see that they really do intend to stay around for a while...
Tic Tac anyone?
This site is everywhere these days, but for those who have missed it so far, it's time to cast your vote. Who would make a better president, Bush or a box of Tic-Tacs? You decide. Your voting experience today will...
BYOQS [bring your own queer sign]
I'm mad as hell! And it's not just because my country is about to blow up millions of people on the other side of the world who wish us no harm. I'm a bit upset that my country has been...
March 18, 2003
so's your old man!
I don't know why I bother. No one cares, and there's nothing anyone can do about it, but I still want to point out that the "diplomacy" of the White House has come to this: Bush has given Iraq an...
four letters
This morning the Guardian printed four of Rachel Corrie's last letters. I no longer have the nerve to show just excerpts. A dear Palestinian friend of ours who is now staying with his family in Jerusalem found the link and...
keep your eye on the press, but read the web
This is what the "major" media will make this war look like. Included in Robert Fisk's prediction:Weasel words to watch for 'Inevitable revenge' – for the executions of Saddam's Baath party officials which no one actually said were inevitable. 'Stubborn'...
falling on Tony Blair's sword
Clare Short is so mid-Atlantic. The British Secretary of State for International Development first criticized her government's rush to war and threatened to resign from office (this definitely not the way of an American politician) and then she decided to...
there will be a tomorrow, and it will be exhilarating
Eric Alterman again:These are upsetting times. You can sense the nervy dejection in the emails and calls we get here at CounterPunch. True, testing times loom, though not in such measure as for the people of Iraq, or for Palestinians...
they all belong to the ages
Tonight Eric Alterman sees Rachel Corrie in the stars.So here we are at the festival of Purim. Back in 1994, on the eve of Purim, a son of Brooklyn, Baruch Goldstein, killed 29 Palestinian worshipers in the Ibrahimi Mosque (...
March 17, 2003
Rachel's story
This is a statement from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) which Rachel Corrie loved and for whose noble purpose she gave her life yesterday.Today, Rachel Corey, a 23 year old student from Olympia, USA was killed by the Israeli army...
Rachel Corrie writes home
This excerpt from a February 7 email Rachel Corrie wrote to her parents appears with their help and that of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).Today as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called...
what allies?
I love the NYTimes lead headline early this morning in the print edition. And how much of it is editorial sarcasm? BUSH AND 2 ALLIES SEEM SET FOR WAR TO OPPOSE HUSSEIN Actually, as far as anyone seems to know,...
March 16, 2003
ISM activist murdered by Israeli government
The headline refers to a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and it is not hyperbole. The policy of the Sharon government is to discourage foreign defenders of the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people it has reduced...
stupidity and cynicsm, anyone noticing this?
I'm still trying to digest this news, so I ask you to stay with me for a minute while I try to sort it out myself. The media reported yesterday that the administration has named nine senior Iraqi officials who...
March 15, 2003
Bush gone off the deep end
Paul Krugman sees Bush as Captain Queeg. But unfortunately this isn't fiction, and there's more than one ship at risk.Aboard the U.S.S. Caine, it was the business with the strawberries that finally convinced the doubters that something was amiss with...
for Germans, the end of a kind of self-censorship
In an article frustratingly inadequate for the subject, at least on account of its brevity (although it takes 64 inches of NYTimes typespace, including two excellent historical photographs), Richard Bernstein reports on a new German phenomenon. After sixty years of...
calling a plague a plague
A surprisingly mild-tongued Larry Kramer calls a plague a plague in the NYTimes today.Why does no one have the courage to say loudly and unequivocally that 50 million people around the world are going to die in a matter of...
making the world safe for all kinds of terror
Via Electrolite, a serious look by Michael Lind at what the Bushites have done to global security.The grand strategy of the Bush administration rests on three axioms: American global hegemony; preventive war; and the so-called "war on terror." All three...
no kristallnacht yet, but we are warned
An alert from Adam Greenfield, via Kottke.org, that the U.S. may face a brain drain not unlike that which accompanied the Nazi consolidation of power in the 30's. Ironically, 65 years ago, in spite of its own nativist immigration policies,...
Ridge: Iraq war will increase terrorist danger
This is not a news story. It's not even an interesting feature story. We all know this already and it's definitely not entertaining. In fact, I'm convinced the only reason the White House and the NYTimes got together today on...
March 14, 2003
silence equals death
Don't be quiet.JACKSONVILLE, AR -- The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging officials at Jacksonville Junior High School over repeated punishment of a 14-year-old student for being openly gay. In a letter to school officials sent today, the ACLU demanded...
let's not paint ourselves into a corner
U.N. resolution or not, this war violates international law. So argues Rahul Mahajan in an excerpt from a book on the U.S. war against Iraq.The majority of the antiwar movement has made a mistake in emphasizing the unilateral nature of...
leaders of "coalition of the willing" exile selves
They're in hiding in the middle of the Atlantic, because they know they wouldn't be safe from the ridicule and fury of millions anywhere on the continent of Europe.President Bush will travel to Portugal's Azores islands, about 900 miles west...
March 13, 2003
can we be good Germans?
Ted Rall argues that "supporting our troops while they're fighting an immoral and illegal war is misguided and wrong."We find ourselves facing the paradox of the "good German" of the '30s. We're ruled by an evil, non-elected warlord who ignores...
U.S. press is relevant only as a propaganda arm
Most thinking folks know there really is no independent mainstream press left in the U.S. Molly Ivins is more generous, but even she's paid by the commercial media. While she thinks it could still profit from some soul-searching to see...
in case of armageddon
From Not In Our Name:In the event that the worst happens, and the U.S. does launch its vicious "Shock and Awe" bombing of the people of Iraq, go immediately to www.notinourname.net for the latest information on resistance plans.While you're there,...
March 12, 2003
ouch!
Even if it can't bring itself to do the proper business of Congress itself, the U.S. House of Representatives has the courage and the time to rename items on all of its cafeteria menus in response to the terrorist threat...
war as weapons test
There may be more of a relationship than we already knew between this White House and the destruction of the town of Guernica, where the Nazis first tested the weapons of modern warfare. Military analyst Vladimir Slipchenko's description is probably...
making it work in Mississippi
The Russians have come to Lorman, Mississippi, and that's a very good thing indeed.It is not easy getting white students to come here, to Alcorn State University, a tiny, historically black campus tucked away in the lush green isolation of...
dysfunctionals playing in the White House
Early this morning in a BBC news radio report, I first heard about U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfield's press briefing statement yesterday that the U.S. might invade Iraq without Britain.Question: Would the United States go to war without Great Britain? Mr...
March 11, 2003
expose the lies and the hypocrisy
We need more heroes to match this one! Daniel Ellsberg asks for leaks of information which would discredit a maniacal and immoral policy.Ellsberg, an ex-Marine and military analyst, said he held out hope that exposing alleged lies by the Bush...
March 10, 2003
Idyllic cyclist freed to run for peace
Reza K. Baluchi is free at last. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has decided not to appeal a judge's decision eleven days ago which officially granted him political asylum. During the interim Baluchi has been kept in the Arizona...
so now the C.I.A. is kidnapping children
The C.I.A. has kidnapped, and is now interrogating and holding hostage to the full cooperation of their father, the 7 and 9 year-old sons of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. TalkLeft, which identifies itself as an "online source of liberal coverage of...
March 9, 2003
photographs from the first Iraq war
This is what we did not see. And these images do not even include the corpses and mutiliations of civilians. The photographs and the statement which accompanies them are from a new book by war-correspondent Peter Turnley:This past war and...
March 7, 2003
Mark Morford's the best!
See Barry's post for Mark Morford's latest, "THE LIE OF THE U.S. MILITARY Tough gritty American soldiers protect freedom of liberal SF columnist? Or the other way around?." I understand and value the need for a strong military. I appreciate...
no one notices the lies anymore
At a moment when truth and intelligence seem to count for nothing in our government, it may hardly be worth pointing out that Bush repeatedly lied last night when describing U.N. Resolution 1441 (not one reporter called him on them)....
U.S. out to paint U.N. as evil
The interests which placed the Bush administration in power have always wanted to destroy the U.N. Last night in Bush's statements they made clear that they would bring what would effectively be a resolution for war before the Security Council...
March 6, 2003
Bush makes a fool of himself, and all of us as well
Watching that stupid little fool, inarguably the most powerful man on the planet, propped up in the white House behind a podium with its modern speaking tube mumbling, and as if sedated, the same phrases over and over again may...
poll says Bush would lose to "fill in the blank"
"How am I doing?" Ed Koch used to ask continually as he walked about a New York City smothered by his outsized personality. George W. Bush doesn't ask this question, and now he has a very good reason not to....
give speech a chance
Too many are shutting it down.The creator of a satirical Web site that took aim at Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, said he felt a chill when the letter on White House stationery arrived.The website, www.whitehouse.org, is...
"oderint dum metuant"
Most of us hardly need to hear much more argument or even more real eloquence on the subject of an Iraq war and the murderous political cynicism behind it, but career diplomat John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation is exceptionally...
Reuters describes Bush as "taking power" in 2001
Is Reuters making a cynical editorial comment, or just reflecting the reality of the fascist coup, by describing Bush as "taking power" in this report on tonight's press conference?Reflecting the seriousness of the situation, the 8 p.m. EST news conference...
"And we will never be the same"
Mark Morford has a vision. No, it's a nightmare. It's our future.These are the final days of peace in America. Please remember to turn off the lights and lock up when you leave. These are the last days of relative...
if only it really were just Blair and a saber
Doesn't this say just about everything we need to know about democracy in the U.K., the U.S., or indeed, the world?Until now, Blair has said he reserved the right to go to war without U.N. authorization in case a singular...
the mauling of American liberties
There are all kinds of reasons to question the various plans for the site of the World Trade Center, but one of them is not an argument about aesthetics. The entire former WTC area was extraterritorial, meaning not subject to...
Bush war violates Article 1, Section 8
Some of us know that there was a fascist coup two years ago, but some of us refuse to give up. John Bonifaz probably expects to take his case to the Supreme Court, although he can hardly have any illusions...
Colin de Land, "our Alfred Stieglitz"
He was a treasure for the visual art world and a beautiful soul to those who knew him. Colin de Land died this week....
March 3, 2003
the world will turn
I think we have hardly seen the beginning of a powerful antiwar movement without precedent.LONDON, March 2 -- The people who helped organize the largest worldwide peace demonstration in history last month say they are not through yet. More than...
March 2, 2003
Bloomberg says it's all about decor
Some would say it's about decorum. His. I say it's plain political hypocrisy and homophobia. The man who claims to be a mayor for all New Yorkers says he will march in the St. Patrick's Day parade again this year.Parade...
