[Peace-discuss] News from Neptune for 14 March 2014

[C. G. Estabrook]

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6MQiZk3CI0>.

A "Counterpuncher" edition 
Produced and directed by Caleb Seripinas
on Urbana Public Television

The new number o the New Left Review (January February 2014) contains an article by its quondam editor Perry Anderson on the life and career of the late Alexander Cockburn, simply best political journalist in America in the era of the coming of neoliberalism (and a major influence on our program). An excerpt:

From the start, long before Clinton was elected, Alexander foresaw what the governor of Arkansas, mired in state-level malfeasance and connexions to the Contra programme, would mean as a ruler of the country: Walmart jobs for the many and Marc Rich pardons for the few. Within five months of the new Presidency he was writing: ‘The Clinton administration is over. Oh, it will drag on in a thickening twilight of new beginnings and fresh tomorrows’, under a ruler whose language bespoke his vision: ‘Clinton’s sloppy, tired phrases limp through the reality of America like an obese Sunday jogger waddling down the road.’ Of his claim to diplomatic fame, Alexander, abandoning mockery, wrote in words that are no less implacably actual today:

"It would take the pen of Swift to evoke the nauseating scenes of hypocrisy, bad faith and self-delusion on the White House lawn today [13 September 1993], crammed as it was with people who for long years were complicit in the butchery and torture of Palestinians and the denial of their rights, now applauding the ‘symbolic handshake’ that in fact ratified further negation of those same rights. In the shadow of an American President with the poise and verbiage of the manager of a McDonald’s franchise, Arafat produced oratory so meagre it made Rabin sound like Cicero.

"Right now, Palestinians get the right to manage the world’s largest prison, the Gaza Strip, plus one cow town. It’s as though the Irish in 1921 got Tralee plus a few acres in West Cork, with the British holding the entire eastern half, Belfast, Dublin, Waterford, plus all the resources, with its army free to roam at will across the Irish enclaves, themselves fragmented by British highways and drained of water. There will be no Palestinian sovereignty and an economy completely subordinated to Israel’s."

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