From harelb Fri Feb  8 01:15:37 1991
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 91 01:21:52 -0500
From: harelb (Harel Barzilai)
To: ce137z1@prism.gatech.edu, harelb@cabot.dartmouth.edu
In-Reply-To: gaia's message of Thu, 31 Jan 91 01:00:02 -0500 <9101310600.AA21621@prism.gatech.edu>


	Alexander Cockburn's opinions and articles are always deliberate,
   anti-American tracts.  This is no different.   He would argue, vehemently,
   that the death of 6 priests in El Salvador serves as a reason to deny any
   foreign aid to that country

So would anyone without ideological blinders who is aware of the
human-rights and power-structure (and "justice"-system, etc) situation
in El Salvador, as documented at length by Amensty, Oxfam, and many
others.

                       while excusing the most heinous and despicable
   acts committed by countries or revolutionary groups which represent anti-
   capitalist, anti-democratic values.  

This is the usual slander, to which Chomsky and others have been
subjected to. No doubt someone will post a reply commenting on
Cockburn's "double standard" wrt Saddam's crime, even as the excerpts
quoted explicitly named them several times. Similarly for his regular
columns; you can look up Cockburn's "apologetics" for China, for
example, following the massacre for one counter-example.

As far as their "one sided focus" I agree; that the responsibility of
each citizen is the actions of his or her government is so simple and
obvious that it is entirely skipped over when "america-hating"
rhetoric is in the air. As Americans, we don't have much say about
China's policy; however, we do have say (or rather, in a properly
functioning democracy, we would) in our government's policy, and hence
our responsibility meant fighting against Bush's cozying up to the
Chinese killers.

Similarly, Cockburn, myself, and other `radicals' exercised our
responsibility in criticizing U.S. [administration] support for
Saddam because of Saddam's attrocities, for example, while we are
exercising our responsibility not to allow the betrayers of this
country who now "lead" it to use Saddam's record (working within the
"free press" which allows for mass-amnesia about the history of U.S.
support for Saddam, and other butchers still today such as El
Salvador) to justify their policies --which have nothing to do with
human righs or "democracy" but have plenty to do with perpetuating the
so-called Military Industrial Complex, and astronomical military
spending far beyond the requisites of "defense"-- to try to use
Saddam's atrocities to "punish him" which means to perpetuate
mass-slaughter against tens of thousands of Iraqi -as well as other
arab- civilians and draftees, while diverting attention form domestic
scandals, not the least of which is the overall state of the country,
left in ruins precisely due to decades of military-Keynesianism.

   -- Steve Fischer (ce137z1@prism.gatech.edu)