Global

A while back some angry kids went on a killing spree at their school, and the nation went on an hysterical binge. How could children - “good,” wealthy, white children for-God’s-sake - go on a violent rampage? It was un-American, unthinkable!! Everyone wanted an explanation of the inexplicable. About the best they could do was to lean on the “Goths” and other “misfits” who “obviously” suffered prominence-envy in comparison with their social betters. Here and there around the country diligent up-scale school officials imposed “zero tolerance” and took advantage of the immediately available psychological profiling programs so as to identify and label the potential “killers” and, thereby, provide a sense of security, responsibility, and hope.

Well, forget that. Let’s face facts. Americans kill because Americans love to kill. “Columbine” was devastating not because it involved killing, but because it broke the rules. In America proper killing, is more than acceptable; it is honorable. Some of our greatest role models are killers, directly or indirectly.

U.S. policy in Iraq, as reported in the mainstream news, amounts to “we liberated Kuwait” and Saddam “kills his own people.” Saddam Hussein has been so vilified that when we think of Iraq, we fail to think about the millions of Iraqis who unfortunately have no more control over the actions of their dictatorship government than we have over our “democracy.” The mainstream media plays almost exclusively to our fears of “weapons of mass destruction.” With rare exception, the suffering of the Iraqi people is largely an untold story in the U.S. The Gulf War and the sanctions imposed on Iraq for the last 10 years have caused the deaths of over 1.5 million people in a once thriving country of about 22.5 million people. Many people, including the former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq , Denis Halliday, call this genocide. The sanctions themselves have become the new weapon of mass destruction.

The struggle for U.S. hegemony over Iraqi oil resources has a long, sordid, history beginning with the CIA-backed assassination of Abdel Karim Kassem in 1963 leading to the eventual rise to power of Saddam Hussein. When Iraq nationalized its oil industry in 1972, the U.S.

The School of the Americas is now a sad and dismal part of American history. The institution was formally closed on November 15, 2000. Col. Mark Morgan told Congressional aides at a Defense Department briefing this was necessary because, “Some of your bosses have told us that they can’t support anything with the name ‘School of Americas’ on it.” But wait. A clone appears on the horizon. Yes, the School of the Assassins reopened as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC) on January 15, 2001.

What that name change means:

The atrocities continue as names of School of the Americas (SOA) graduates continue to turn up wherever there are human rights violations in Latin America. The year 2000 saw former Guatemalan dictators Efrain Rios Montt and Fernando Lucas Garcia brought into court on genocide charges. During their regime thousands were killed and hundreds of thousands forced into refuge or exile. Both men, and a number of their high-ranking cabinet officials, were SOA-trained.

I still remember the shock of May 4, 1970 after hearing the news of the shootings at Kent State – the unnerving feeling that they were coming for me and my friends next -- as a Detroit 9th grade hippie greaser/MC5 listener/White Panther Party supporter. My rage grew in high school fueled in part by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

By the time I became a college radical and activist in the fall of ’73, and a mistaken supporter of Eldridge Cleaver, I firmly believed that the students should have been better organized with well-armed militias and shot back. Hell, I dreamed about getting down to it, as Neil Young advised. It’s one of the reasons I spent the 70’s boycotting Wendy’s -- you know, the Rhodes/Dave Thomas connection -- and fighting to stop the construction of the gym at the death site at Kent State. I have these vivid flashbacks of October 1977, tear gas everywhere, and I swear Dana Beal and a group of yippies emerged from the fog to line dance wearing gas masks. It still makes me smile.

When the Ameritrade company launched a $200 million marketing drive to explain the joys of online trading in autumn 1999, a barrage of TV commercials invited viewers to join in the fun. The news was bullish, and the firm's motto -- "Believe in yourself" -- provided an upbeat message. Tech stocks led advances in self-affirmation.

A senior vice president at Ameritrade proclaimed that online investing "empowers individuals to take control of their financial lives." Within several months, the Nasdaq composite index nearly doubled. When spring 2000 began, plenty of satisfied new customers were glad to be playing the click-and-invest game.

Now, four seasons later, the Nasdaq is less than half of where it was. Losses have been particularly devastating for many of the investors who'd found the get-with-it advertisements and other media hype too irresistible to resist a year ago.

Commander-in-Chief Bush doesn't want to eat crow, but the truly big question is whether those captive boys and girls from the U.S. surveillance plane are being forced to eat dog without their knowledge. The Canadians, eager to discredit their rival, China, as a host of the 2008 Olympics, have been putting out stories about the Middle Kingdom's trade in St. Bernard dogs, which the Chinese fatten to succulence, then slaughter and prepare in various delectable dishes too numerous for individual citation at this time.

The Turks, also vying to host those 2008 games, are similarly printing St. Bernard atrocity stories discreditable to the Chinese Peoples' Republic. Will the Olympic Committee, of which Henry Kissinger (a lobbyist for the PRC) is a member, order tests of Chinese athletes to see if they have been strengthened by the tasty musculature of the St. Bernards?

It's not easy to look at ourselves as others might see us. For a country, the need is especially acute in times of international crisis -- but that's when nationalism and other reflexive biases are most likely to become pivotal.

One of the ways to test for media slant is to put the shoe on the other foot. A big story this month provides an opportunity for inquiry in the world of intense media spin.

Here are some excerpts from actual U.S. news coverage, with only one type of change -- I've reversed the references to China and the United States. The mirror-image narrative is worth pondering.

ABC World News Tonight: "There are concerns about national security and a Chinese military flight crew that was forced to make an emergency landing during a surveillance flight along the East Coast of the United States. The Chinese spy plane was equipped with sophisticated intelligence-gathering technology."

CNN: "Chinese military officials say that they are, first and foremost, concerned about the safety of the crew. They want that crew returned back to China."

Here's a parable about what is intellectually respectable and politically safe in this country, and what is not. It concerns two of this country's best known public intellectuals, Edward Said and Susan Sontag.

It's a backhanded tribute to his effectiveness as spokesman for the Palestinian cause that the attacks on the Palestinian Said have, across the last couple of years, reached new levels of envenomed absurdity.

The latest storm over Said concerns a trip to Lebanon he took last summer, in the course of which he and his family took the opportunity to visit the recently evacuated "security zone" formerly occupied by Israeli forces, first the terrible Khiam prison, then a deserted border post, abandoned by Israeli troops, and now crowded with festive Lebanese throwing exuberant stones at the heavily fortified border.

FREEP HEROES

Subcommandante Marcos and the Zapatistas

As the Zapatistas say, “Our struggle is yours.” As we go to press, Subcommadante Marcos and the Zapatista delegation are in Mexico City attempting to negotiate an indigenous Bill of Rights, long overdue after 509 years of the conquistadors. We salute their efforts and stand in solidarity with their struggle against corporate “neo-liberal” economics ravaging Central America under the guise of “Free Trade.”

THE FREE PRESS SALUTES

Columbus City Councilwoman Charleta Tavares

Once again, we salute Charleta Tavares. With the School Board moving in the opposite direction in restricting citizen input, Tavares has courageously opened up the committee she chairs on Council, the Health, Housing and Human Services Committee, to more citizen’s input. Tavares understands that when democracy isn’t working just right the solution is not to hide in the bunker, but to invite more participation.

ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE

Ex-Columbus Public Schools Superintendent Rosa Smith