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Why Hillary Clinton has Always Been a Republican In the first of a series of profiles, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair chart the formative years of Hillary Clinton. Watch her as she zigzags from Nixon campaigner and vote-fraud investigator in 1960 to Goldwater Girl and President of Young Republicans at Wellesley to her internship for Gerald Ford and campaigner for Nelson Rockefeller. Witness her reaction to the student protests at Yale and the demonstrations at Grant Park during the Democratic Convention in 1968. Learn how she and Bill vowed to "remake" the Democratic Party--using the Nixon model HRC learned about as a member of the House impeachment staff. And much more! Plus: David Price on anthropologist Andre Gunder Frank, the FBI and the Bureaucratic Exile of a Critical Mind.
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Today's Stories July 21 / 22, 2007 Ralph
Nader July 20, 2007 Eliza
Szabo Pam
Martens Alan
Farago Harvey
Wasserman Marjorie
Cohn Dave
Zirin Anthony
DiMaggio Scott
Liebertz Linn
Washington, Jr. Bill
Piper / Anthony Papa Ramzy
Baroud Website
of the Day
July 19, 2007 Patrick
Cockburn Remi
Kanazi Winslow
T. Wheeler Sharon
Smith Dave
Lindorff Conn
Hallinan D.
K. Wilson Joshua
Frank Norman
Solomon Russell
Hoffman Ray
McGovern Website
of the Day July 18, 2007 Brenda
Norrell Col.
Dan Smith Martha
Rosenberg Conn
Hallinan Binoy
Kampmark Patrick
Bond / Tom
Johnson Paul
Craig Roberts Bob
Quellos Felice
Pace Robert
Weissman CP
Newswire Website
of the Day
July 17, 2007 Patrick
Cockburn Marjorie
Cohn Evelyn
Pringle David
Rosen Susan
Miller Franklin
Lamb Don
Monkerud Harvey
Wasserman Russell
Hoffman Dave
Lindorff Dave
Zirin Website
of the Day
July 16, 2007 Gary
Leupp Ellen
Cantarow Paul
Craig Roberts Allan
J. Lichtman Dan
Bacher Patrick
Cockburn Manuel
Garcia, Jr. James
Brooks Liaquat
Ali Khan Julie
Flint Website
of the Day
July 14 / 15. 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Andy
Worthington Ralph
Nader Robert
Fantina Ron
Jacobs Joshua
Frank Conn
Hallinan Dr.
Susan Rosenthal, MD John
Ross Fred
Gardner Rannie
Amiri Charles
Modiano Anthony
DiMaggio China
Hand Missy
Comley Beattie Dr.
James J. Murtagh, Jr. Kenneth
Rexroth Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
July 13, 2007 Patrick
Cockburn Winslow
T. Wheeler Imran
Khan Todd
Chretien Sam
Husseini Dr.
Herman Mindshaftgap Anthony
Papa D.
K. Wilson David
Michael Green Website
of the Day
July 12, 2007 Paul
Craig Roberts Robert Jensen Dr. Susan Block Joshua Frank John Chuckman Corporate Crime
Reporter Mike Whitney Nicola Nasser Richard Rhames William S.
Lind Website of the Day
July 11, 2007 Patrick
Cockburn Richard
Neville Debra
McNutt John
V. Walsh Scott
Liebertz George
C. Wilson James
McEnteer Philip
Rizk Johnny
Hazard Dave
Lindorff Website
of the Day
July 10, 2007 James
Ridgeway Tariq
Ali Javed
Hussein William
Blum Ralph
Nader Jay
Arena Anthony
DiMaggio Eva
Liddell Jerry
Kroth Alice
Woodward Nikolas
Kozloff Paul
Shannon Website
of the Day
July 9, 2007 Fidel
Castro Diana
Johnstone John
Walsh Uri
Avnery Ramzy
Baroud John
Ripton Stephen
Lendman Bruce
Jackson Michael
Donnelly Doug
Giebel Website
of the Day
Saul
Landau Ismael
Hossein-zadeh Fawzia
Afzal-Khan John
Ross Pat
Williams Rannie
Amiri Farzana
Versey Bart
Gruzalski Paul
Rockwell Reza
Fiyouzat Monica
Benderman Kenneth
Couesbouc Dave
Lindorff Charles
Modiano Missy
Beattie Dal
LaMagna Jean
Gerard Anne
Dachel Ron
Jacobs Poets'
Basement Website
of the Day
Daniel
Ellsberg Gary
Leupp Harvey
Wasserman Omer
Subhani Marjorie
Cohn Christopher
Brauchli David
Michael Green China
Hand Renee
Saucedo Corporate
Crime Reporter Website
of the Day
July 5, 2007 Andy
Worthington Mike
Stark Norman
Solomon Michael
Schwartz Susie
Day Jacob
Hornberger Bill
Hatch Don
Fitz John
Wright Website
of the Day
July 4, 2007 St.
Clair / Frank Vijay
Prashad Carl
G. Estabrook Ron
Jacobs David
R. Dow Claudia
Johnson William
S. Lind Gregory
Afghani Paul
Edwards D.
K. Wilson Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Thomas
Jefferson Cindy
Sheehan Website
of the Day
Bill
Quigley Gary
Leupp Lynda
Brayer Richard
Thieme Helen
Redmond David
Swanson Jacob
Hornberger Ayesha
Ijaz Khan Franklin
Lamb Ray
McGovern Kevin
Zeese Dave
Lindorff Website
of the Day
Andy
Worthington Nina
Serrano Jack
Hirschman Paul
Craig Roberts Bill
Williams Anthony
Papa Sonja
Karkar Louay
Safi Anthony
Gregory Monica
Benderman Website
of the Day
June 30 / July 1, 2007 John
Ross Alan
Farago Peter
Quinn Christopher
Brauchli Robert
Fisk Uri
Avnery Judith
Siers-Poisson Saul
Landau Abbas
Zaidi Ron
Jacobs Ralph
Nader Donald
Worster Mike
Whitney Jacob
Hill Kenneth
Couesbouc Missy
Beattie Mohammad
Kamaali Ramzy
Baroud Leonard
Peltier Phyllis
Pollack Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
June 29, 2007 St.
Clair / Frank Brian
Cloughley Patrick
Cockburn Gilad
Atzmon Dave
Lindorff Jennifer
Matsui / Kevin
Zeese Daniel
Klimek David
Michael Green John
Chuckman Website
of the Day
June 28, 2007 Bill
Quigley Vijay
Prashad Margaret
Kimberley Winslow
T. Wheeler Philip
Rizk D.
K. Wilson Bill
Williams Mahmoud
El-Yousseph Richard
Rhames Paul
Krassner Website
of the Day
Marjorie
Cohn Dr.
Susan Rosenthal, MD Alan
Farago Carla
Blank Matthew
Abraham Sunsara
Taylor Russell
D. Hoffman Robert
Weissman Sen.
Russ Feingold Paul
Buchheit Website
of the Day
June 26, 2007 Jonathan
Cook Ralph
Nader Corporate
Crime Reporter Ron
Jacobs Martha
Rosenberg John
Chuckman Denny
Haldeman Anthony
DiMaggio Stephen
Fleischman William
S. Lind Website
of the Day
Paul
Craig Roberts Jennifer
Loewenstein Bob
Anderson Robert
Pollin Patrick
Cockburn Eva
Liddell Dan
Bacher Larry
Atkins Mark
Brenner James
Rothenberg Website
of the Day June 23 / 24, 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Jeff
Taylor Oren
Ben-Dor Gary
Leupp Robert
Fisk David
Rosen Russell
Mokhiber Alison
Weir Robert
Fantina D.
K. Wilson Nicole
Colson Stephen
Soldz, Steven Reisner and Brad Olson Dave
Lindorff Benjamin
Dangl Michael
Dickinson Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
June 22, 2007 Andy
Worthington Sherwood
Ross Eliana
Monteforte Robert
Weissman Richard
Rhames Christopher
Brauchli Ramzy
Baroud Ehud
Krinis, David Shulman and Neve Gordon David
Michael Green Kathryn
Webber Website
of the Day
June 21, 2007 Peter
Linebaugh Natsu
Saito Ron
Jacobs Saree
Makdisi John
Stauber Scott
Liebertz Tom
Clifford Robert
Jensen Michael
J. Smith Jeb
Sprague Website
of the Day
Omar
Barghouti Andy
Worthington Margaret
Kimberley Robert
Weissman Russell
D. Hoffman Rannie
Amiri Stephen
Lendman Dave
Lindorff David
Swanson Anne
Dachel Website
of the Day
June 19, 2007 Ralph
Nader Dr.
Shepherd Bliss Bill
and Kathleen Christison Jeff
Leys Dave
Zirin Chris
Floyd Ben
Terrall Anthony
Papa VIPS Linda Flores Website
of the Day
John
Ross Paul
Craig Roberts Martha
Rosenberg Norman
Solomon Don
Santina Isabella
Kenfield James
Brooks Eva
Liddell Sam
Husseini Akiva
Eldar Website
of the Day
Alexander
Cockburn John
Halle Robert
Fisk Andy
Worthington Uri
Avnery Fred
Gardner Saul
Landau P.
Sainath Missy
Comley Beattie Alan
Gregory Walter
Brasch Website
of the Weekend
June 15, 2007 Alan
Farago Andy
Worthington Michael
Simmons Franklin
Lamb Gary
Leupp John
Ross Website
of the Day
June 14, 2007 Michael
Donnelly
Faisal
Kutty Harry
Browne Charles
Jonkel Steven
Higgs Bruce
Dixon Bruce
K. Gagnon
Website
of the Day June 13, 2007 Glen Ford Marjorie Cohn Bill Christison Charles Jonkel Silvia Cattori Richard Gott Firmin DeBrabander William S. Lind Keith Rosenthal Website of the Day June 12, 2007 Jeffrey St.
Clair Paul Craig
Roberts P. Sainath Ralph Nader Omar Waraich Dave Lindorff Harvey Wasserman Malini Johar
Schueller Ramzy Baroud Website of
the Day
June 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig
Roberts Uri Avnery Norman Solomon Eva Liddell Rannie Amiri Rachel Voss Christopher
Brauchli D. K. Wilson Website of
the Day
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Weekend
Edition How to Sell an Endless WarBuy HardBy DAVID KEEN The current Bush administration has sometimes been very frank about the need to sell the 'war on terror', and many of the elements used to sell that attack on Iraq--the intelligence dossiers, the unsourced revelations, the denigration of hard evidence, the cosying-up to prominent exiles--are now being used to sell an attack on Iran. With some 22 minutes out of every hour on US TV given over to advertising, the public is accustomed to being sold things on the promise of nirvana if they only succumb. If the Iraq debacle is anything to go by, the process can be extended--remarkably smoothly, in many ways--to selling (and buying) a war. Andy Card, George W. Bush's chief of staff, said Congress had not been asked in August 2002 to authorise military force in Iraq because "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." When Colin Powell appointed a Madison Avenue advertising star, Charlotte Beers, as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, he explained on 6 September 2001: "I wanted one of the world's greatest advertising experts, because what are we doing? We're selling. We're selling a product democracy the free enterprise system, the American value system." This was less direct than Andy Card, but one could easily add 'war' to this list of goodies since war--particularly after the cataclysm of five days later - was the chosen way of achieving these benefits. Rampton and Stauber commented: "Rather than changing the way we actually relate to the people of the Middle East, [US officials] still dream of fixing their image through some new marketing campaign cooked up in Hollywood or Madison Avenue." But how, exactly, do you sell a war? The usual rules of advertising seem to serve just fine. The first rule is: repeat your message often enough and people will believe it. Adolph Hitler had already taken this insight into the political sphere: "The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous [Propaganda] must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over." Hitler, in fact, made the connection with commercial advertising explicit: "All advertising, whether in the field of business or politics, achieves success through the continuity and sustained uniformity of its application." In her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt noted the reliance of Soviet and Nazi leaders on repeating lies. After 9/11, US government officials repeatedly stressed the links between Iraq and 9/11. Bush frequently linked bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in the same breath, though he was pretty tricky in the exact wording, suggesting he knew it was an artful lie. In an October 2002 opinion poll, 66 per cent of Americans said they believed Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks, and 79 per cent said he possessed, or was close to possessing, nuclear weapons. As late as July 2006, 64 per cent of US respondents still believed Saddam had maintained strong links to al-Qaida and 50 per cent believed he had harboured weapons of mass destruction. Reporters who interviewed US soldiers in Kuwait on the eve of the war in Iraq were shocked to find them convinced they were going to fight 'terrorists', a misconception that--as Max Rodenbeck points out - surely fed into the frequent instances of overly aggressive behaviour. Now the official focus has switched to Iran, whose government, according to Bush, is "belligerent, loud, noisy, threatening". There were no less than five mentions of Iran in Bush's January 2007 State of the Union address and Iran is constantly in the news. A second rule of advertising is: find some memorable catch-phrases. After Bush introduced the phrase "axis of evil" in a January 2002 speech, Woodward reported, "[Deputy Defence Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz saw once again how important it was to grab the headlines, and he was reminded that academics didn't get it. Oversimplification was required in a sound-bite culture." When Rumsfeld mentioned the concept of "shock and awe", Bush said it was a catchy notion. Another common sound-bite was the "smoking gun"--as when Bush said of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, "we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a nuclear cloud." More recent catch-phrases suggest a shifting definition of the enemy and an intensifying spotlight on Iran. Bush noted in August 2006 that the US was "at war with Islamic fascists", while Blair (echoing the "axis of evil") has invoked an "arc of extremism" in the Middle East and beyond, adding that expansion of Iranian power calls for an "arc of moderation" to pin it back. A third rule of advertising is to promise big benefits from your product. This is common-sense but it may be done quite subtly. Advertising has a strong strain of wish-fulfilment--it appeals to a pervasive and powerful kind of magical thinking. Typically, the product is portrayed as possessing magical qualities that will bring you love, sex, respect, security, or some combination of these. Raymond Williams argued that the problem with consumer society is not that we are too materialistic, but that we are not materialistic enough; if we were sensibly materialistic, if we confined our interest to the usefulness of objects, we would find most advertising to be of insane irrelevance. The magical thinking behind the 'war on terror' is what allows such a radical disconnect between problem and solution--most glaringly, between 9/11 and attacking Iraq. Arendt noted in The Origins of Totalitarianism that it can be very attractive when leaders offer solutions with a degree of certainty; the illogical nature of the proposed 'solution' (for example, eliminating the Jews as a remedy for Germany's military and economic problems) does not necessarily make it any less attractive. Arendt also noted that the need for certainty may be particularly intense in circumstances where people's own economic and social circumstances are precarious; she suggested that part of the appeal of fascism was that the identification of a clearly-identified enemy--whilst frightening--was less frightening and less disorienting than a world in which the source of insecurity remained obscure. That analysis resonates today. In his book What's the matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank provides a revealing case-study of how economic insecurity has fed into support for Bush and for right-wing politicians more generally. Frank argues that in Kansas (and, by extension, much of middle America), a longstanding hostility towards big corporations has been displaced into a 'backlash' politics that includes hostility towards foreign enemies, towards a range of 'outgroups', and towards the forces (like science, evolution, secularism and pluralism) that seem to undermine old and comfortable certainties. Whilst the Bush administration has significantly exacerbated domestic inequality and insecurity, the search for scapegoats precedes his regime. In her 1999 book Stiffed, Susan Faludi considered how economic security in the US had corroded traditional masculine roles centred on on protecting and providing. She wrote of "the search for someone to blame for the premature death of masculine promise", and she elaborated: What began in the 1950s as an intemperate pursuit of Communists in the government bureaucracy, in the defence industries, in labor unions, the schools, the media, and Hollywood, would eventually become a hunt for a shape-shifting enemy who could take the form of women at the office, or gays in the military, or young black men on the street, or illegal aliens on the border, and from there become a surreal 'combat' with nonexistent black helicopters, one-world government, and goose-stepping UN peacekeeping thugs massing on imaginary horizons. The desire to find some kind of an enemy was already in place, in other words. It seems that the terrorist - perhaps the ultimate shape-shifter with his civilian garb, his fluctuating 'state backers', and his tendency to disintegrate at the moment of his greatest crime--has stepped into an existing template. Much earlier instances of scapegoating were illuminated in Keith Thomas's classic study Religion and the Decline of Magic. Thomas noted that when suffering is not explicable within existing frameworks, human beings have tended to resort to magical thinking--in other words, to turn to solutions with no logical or scientific connection to the problem. The limits of medical knowledge in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for example, created a powerful impulse to explain illness through 'witchcraft'. Today, in the face of the 'disease' of contemporary terrorism and the increased disorientation and anxiety after 9/11, severe shortcomings in state-based and economics-based explanatory frameworks have helped to create political and intellectual space for explanations and prescriptions that are once more leading us into the realms of the superstitious and the persecutory. In many ways, we are witnessing a return to magical thinking--the belief and hope that we can re-order the world to our liking by mere force of will or by actions that have no logical connection to the problem we are addressing. And as the old witch-hunts, it is the weakness of the victim that attracts the persecutor--the lack of weapons-of-mass-destruction, the inability to hit the US. The personalities of both George W. Bush and Tony Blair have apparently contributed to this latest wave of magical thinking. US analyst Joe Klein said of Bush, "The President seems to believe that wishing will make it so." Novelist Doris Lessing said of Blair "He believes in magic. That if you say a thing, it is true." Commenting on Blair and the supposed Iraqi 'weapons of mass destruction', Polly Toynbee observed that the British Prime Minister "is so easily carried away by the persuasiveness of his own words and the force of his own arguments that you can hear him mesmerise himself There is an almost childish blurring between the wish and the fact: if he says something strongly enough, his words can magic it into truth" Perhaps the the most convincing salesmen actually do believe in their products (or at least have persuaded themselves to believe); but believing and cajoling have increasingly been revealed as insufficient. In a recent Foreign Affairs article, Blair argues that confronting 'Islamist terrorism' means not only using force but also "telling them that their attitude toward the United States is absurd, that their concept of governance is pre-feudal, that their positions on women and other faiths are reactionary." It also means rejecting "their false sense of grievance against the West". These words may have magical powers that only Blair is aware of; the rest of us may wonder how helpful or persuasive it is to be told that your attitudes are 'absurd' or your grievances are 'false'. In the 'war on terror', key policy-makers have adopted (and sometimes openly expressed) the idea that you do not need evidence on which to base something as serious (and incendiary) as a war. Rumsfeld came close to acknowledging this with his statement that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence of weapons of mass destruction". Notoriously, M16 chief Sir Richard Dearlove told a Downing Street meeting in July 2002 that in the US "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy". More recently, in January 2007, Richard Perle noted that when it came to assessing the nuclear threat from Iran, "You can't afford to wait for all the evidence". There are some indications that, for the Bush administration, the aim has not been to study reality (and then base behaviour on it) but to create reality. In the summer of 2002, journalist and author Ron Suskind met with one of Bush's senior advisers, who was unhappy with an article Suskind had written about the administration's media relations. The adviser commented that: guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." A fourth rule of advertising is that you are selling not only the product but also the problem or threat that the product is alleged to address. To sell the toilet-cleaner, in other words, you have to sell the germs. By extension, to sell the 'war on terror', you have to sell the terror. Of course, 9/11 was a horrifying fact, as were the bombings in Madrid and London that followed the invasion of Iraq. But we now know that the threat from Iraq was systematically exaggerated. Moreover, for all the fears being whipped up in relation to Iran, the threat of a direct attack on the US by Iran is small, particularly when compared with the threat of total obliteration by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Of 42 terrorist organisations listed by the US State Department, only a handful (all linked to al-Qaida) have ever attacked the US or indicated that they wish to do so. A fifth rule in advertising is another very basic one: you stress that the product will not cost much. Selling the attack on Iraq was like selling a dodgy mortgage: the cost looked reasonable but after a certain period--surprise!--the rates went up dramatically. Just before the Iraq war, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Wolfowitz told Congress, "There is a lot of money to pay for this [the Iraq war]. It doesn't have to be US taxpayer money. We are talking about a country that can finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon." Bush underlined the promise in the case of the 'war on terror' by pushing through tax-cuts in the run-up to war. (Indeed, the belief that major foreign and domestic problems can be magically solved without raising significant new taxes is something that seems to have united the Republican Bush and Labour's Blair.) The impression that war would be relatively costless was reinforced by the incitement to a spending spree in the tough-talking aftermath of 9/11. Whilst the US intervention in World War Two had led to a concerted recycling effort and to rationing of gasoline and food, 9/11 led only to calls to US consumers to maintain their spending as a patriotic duty: there was to be a veritable feast at the wake. On 17 October 2001, Bush declared, "They want us to stop flying and they want us to stop buying, but this great nation will not be intimidated by the evildoers." Yet somehow, sometime, the costs of war will |
